Benny Hill presented his versions of the New Avengers, Mastermind, I Claudius, Dickie Davies and even Bionic Baby, in the first of his self-penned specials for 1977. A third of Britain watched.

People & Politics continued into the New Year, with Llew Gardner mixing individual interviews Merlyn Rees, David Steel and Harold Lever were among his subjects with broader debates on topics like transport, and workers participation.

February and March again saw Hughie Green’s Opportunity Knocks! in its fifteenth series riding high in the network top ten every week.

Get Some In!, with Tony Selby starring in John Esmonde and Bob Larbeys comedy of National Service life, had two new series during 1977. Their average network audience for the year was over 15 million viewers per episode.

Not many programmes reach across the class and age spectrum to inspire much the same reaction from diverse people, but Get Some In! is one of them.

Countless National Servicemen (Retd.) – and their fathers – dredging up memories of wartime basic training – keep telling me that the show is not only funny but true to life.

A highly skilfully rationed sprinkle of nostalgia – in the first edition of the new season, references to Ruby Murray and Ronnie Ronalde – Tony Selby’s craven bully of a Corporal, and unselfish teamwork by the rest of the cast, make Get Some In! hard to resist.

Daily Mail

Two popular Outside Broadcast series returned on 23 February. James Hunt was special guest in the first Drive In, with Shaw Taylor and Tony Bastable introducing television’s only regular magazine programme for motorists.

And Keith Fordyce and Claire Rayner returned in Kitchen Garden, to show how to grow and cook your own garden produce – from growing potatoes in a bucket, to cooking your own sour Borscht.

Terry Scott, Lionel Blair and Aimi Macdonald were among the personalities joining Roy Castle, to try to guess the famous parents of young guests who appeared in the new series of Whose Baby?

Mandao, a thoroughbred stallion, was the star of Horse in the House, a six-part children’s drama series written by Rosemary Anne Sissons. Kim McDonald played Mandao’s owner, Melanie.

This Week continued their regular coverage of Ireland in ‘Derry, Time to Remember’, five years after Bloody Sunday. And in Rhodesia, Jonathan Dimbleby talked with Ian Smith and President Nyerere on the failure of the Kissinger plan; in September he would return to cover the next Anglo-American plan.

Outside Broadcasts went to Wembley twice during February to cover England’s fortunes in soccer matches with Holland, and the crucial World Cup battle with Luxembourg.

Rooms continued to occupy the afternoon drama slot each Tuesday and Wednesday, with over sixty episodes in 1977 on the people and events in a West London rooming house.

Getting something new for Robin was a long-term plan. We thought there was a lot more to say about the characters but not in the setting of ‘Man About the House’, which, after 39 episodes, had exhausted their possibilities. Robin is now living happily unmarried, with the daughter of the man whose cash pays for a restaurant business…

Johnnie Mortimer, co-writer with Brian Cooke of ‘Man About the House, top 1976 situation comedy ‘George & Mildred’; and in January, ‘Robin’s Nest’.

‘Welcome to Robin’s Nest, a most professional quick-fire comedy series by Johnnie Mortimer and Brian Cooke, Richard O’Sullivan (Robin) lives with Tessa Wyatt (Vicky) – and a handsome pair they make – much to the disgust of Vicky’s father (Tony Britton, who has the expert timing of a comic pro). We are often labelled a permissive society, but how many years since it has been portrayed in cinema and theatre has it taken television to present a comedy series about living together?’

The Listener

The first episode of Robin’s Nest jumped into the National Top Twenty in third place. It was up to number 2 for the rest of January, kept from top position only by…

This is Your Life, presented by Eamonn Andrews, which held the top network audience for ten weeks running from January through to March. This is Your Life’s perennial audience appeal is reflected by its taking nine out of the top twenty programme viewing figures for the calendar year 1977.

ITV’s first major documentary of the year was Hazlitt in Love, a dramatised film of the famous writer’s love life, written by C P Taylor and based on Hazlitt s book ‘Liber Amoris’. Kenneth Haig played the title role with Lynne Frederick as his femme fatale.

‘Beautifully photographed sexual cliff-hanger based on the slim volume published by the essayist William Hazlitt in expiation of his obsession with his landlady’s daughter, Sarah Walker. Lynne Frederick is faun-like as the lady; Kenneth Haigh is the distressed essayist.’

Evening Standard

Wish You Were Here…? Outside Broadcasts’ midwinter preview of summer holidays, took viewers out and about in Britain with Judith Chalmers and Chris Kelly. During January they travelled from Pitlochry in Scotland and Killarney in Ireland, to Jersey, North Wales and resorts in England.

Christopher Neame and Ann Hasson starred as Romeo & Juliet in a special Schools production of Shakespeare’s play, transmitted in eight episodes.

This Week started the year with an exclusive interview by Peter Williams of Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, just two days after his arrival in Britain. The following week saw the second part of John Fielding’s Soho gangster expose on the murder of ‘Scarface’ Smithson.

Denis Norden’s afternoon programme Looks Familiar had a rare scoop on 12 January when David Niven provided a memorable half-hour’s nostalgia about life in Hollywood during the ’30s and ’40s.

Elizabeth Shepherd, one of the heroines in Romance, described a romantic as ‘someone who does not pine for the loss of her past and has an absolute belief in the possibilities of the future.’ It was this image of the romantic heroine that was revived in six love stories based on classic romantic novels taken from a century of the British love story. Producer Peter Duguid explained his aims in bringing romance back to television:

‘Many of these novels were considered so risque by contemporary readers that they produced a storm of controversy.

‘But while today’s viewers will find little to outrage in our series, I believe we have recreated for television a genre that has been underexposed to the point where it has become, perhaps, undervalued: full-blooded, rich in romance, with a hero, a heroine, often a villain, and a story with a beginning, a middle and an end.

‘It is these easily recognisable values which made the originals so popular, and we have tried to respect them in our television adaptations. I hope that viewers will share and enjoy the magic of these marvellous love stories.’

Three Weeks by Elinor Glyn, adapted by Gerald Savory, director Waris Hussein, starring Elizabeth Shepherd, Simon MacCorkindale.

Moths by Ouida, adapted by Hugh Whitemore, director Waris Hussein, starring Cathryn Harrison, Nigel Davenport, Maria Aitken.

The Black Knight by Ethel M Dell, adapted by John Kershaw, director Peter Hammond, starring Sinead Cusack, Edward Fox, Simon Williams.

High Noon by Ruby M Ayres, adapted by Julia Jones, director Barry Davis, starring Celia Bannerman, Lynn Farleigh, John Fraser.

House of Men by Catherine Marchant, adapted by Ray Jenkins, director Piers Haggard, starring Mary Larkin, James Laurenson, Michael Kitchen.

Emily by Jilly Cooper, adapted by Eleanor Bron, director Alastair Reid, starring Gemma Craven, Ronald Pickup.

Elegance, style, wit and charm

Sunday Times

Take a dash of Wuthering Heights, add a dollop of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, stir in lashings of true romance… marvellous, good old-fashioned stuff.

Daily Express

For sheer escapism, stories with a beginning, a middle and, usually, a comforting end, it will be difficult to beat Romance.

Morning Star

Money-Go-Round, Good Afternoon’s special feature on consumer news, marked its hundredth edition in March with Joan Shenton and Tony Bastable surveying the changes in eating, shopping and life-styles over the past hundred years. Good Afternoon continued daily at 2.00 pm, featuring guests like Alan Coren (on the Silver Jubilee) and Yehudi Menuhin reflecting on his life in music.

March saw the debut of a new 13-part children’s series Jamie and the Magic Torch, from Thames’ animation subsidiary Cosgrove Hall Productions.

In March, This Week’s coverage ranged from Peter Taylor investigating the success of ‘The Hustler’, a sex magazine that is now America’s third best-selling periodical, to John Fielding’s widely-acclaimed expose of The Poisoning of Michigan a This Week Special which told a horrifying story of death and disease resulting from chemical pollution.

While Rock Follies of ’77 was in the final stages of production, the original Rock Follies series was being repeated in Britain, taking America by storm on the Public Broadcasting Network, and winning the Best Drama Series award in the British Academy awards, and two Royal Television Society awards.

The zingy highlight is sure to be Rock Follies – a five-part, five-and-a-half-hour sock-it-to-’em musical soap opera about three smashing birds, long past their teens, who set out to become England’s top group. This funky bundle from Britain, produced by Thames Television, was a rollicking hit over there and ought to score pretty high Stateside as a likeable, offbeat showbiz saga. Throughout, Rock Follies provides a unique and exhilarating change of tempo: less snob appeal, more sex appeal.

Playboy

The post Winter programmes appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Once again, This is Your Life was the single most successful series on British television during 1977. It also achieved its own all-time biggest audience on 27 April, when Lord Mountbatten was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in the Thames foyer, and with nearly 18½ million viewers watching, spent an hour reviewing his past in the company of his family, Juliet Mills, Sir John Mills, Vera Lynn, Sir Bernard Miles, Danny Kaye, Jackie Coogan, and (on film) Bob Hope and Douglas Fairbanks Jnr. By popular request the programme was repeated on Boxing Day. By then the current series was already under way; outstanding among the present run of Lives’ was the tribute to Virginia Wade, winner of her first Wimbledon title in Jubilee Year.

Opportunity Knocks discovery Tom O’Connor established in 1976 through Wednesday at Eight and in the Royal Variety Performance, featured in his own series of six half-hours which began in March. Tom’s humour was complemented by musical entertainment from guests like Barbara Dickson Mahogany and the King’s Singers.

Two more Opportunity Knocks proteges, Syd Little and Eddie Large, topped the bill for their first major series in The Little and Large Tellyshow. With guests from the younger generation of pop music – Suzi Quatro, The Jacksons, Linda Lewis, the Four Tops, and Rock Follies’ Rula Lenska among them – the show came into the Top Twenty at number 13, stayed there for three weeks and then jumped into the top five.

And starting on the same Monday night in April, Man About the House’s Paula Wilcox went straight to number one in London, second on the Network, in the lead role of Richard Waring’s new comedy series Miss Jones and Son. It was an outstanding success from a controversial subject – that of an unmarried mother. ‘Richard Waring’s scripts look for laughs in the right places, and set the complicated life of the motherly Miss Jones in a houseful of sympathetic and lively characters,’ concluded the Evening News.

Richard O’Sullivan, who starred alongside Paula Wilcox in Man About the House, hosted the 1977 TV Times Awards, transmitted on 14 April. Among the Thames stars to whom he presented awards were John Thaw (Most Compulsive Male Character), Julie Covington (Top Female Singer), Yootha Joyce (Funniest Female Personality), and Penelope Keith and John Inman who were both at the time working on new Thames series (The Norman Conquests and Odd Man Out respectively). Top Male TV Personality was Bruce Forsyth, whose one-hour special Bruce and More Girls, with Lesley-Anne Down, Nanette Newman and Dana, topped the London and UK ratings in the same week.

‘Not only did Bruce Forsyth do well with last year’s light entertainment special – he seems to be doing even better as tonight’s show proves. It is literally bulging with talented singing, dancing and comic young women. If there’s one thing that Bruce Forsyth generates it’s pleasure’.

Evening News

Special Easter programming included The Story of Job, a new ballet choreographed to the music of Vaughan Williams by Robert Cohan, danced by the London Contemporary Dance Theatre and narrated by Andrew Cruikshank: and on Easter Monday, Outside Broadcasts went to the Big Top in Croydon for a special Chipperfield’s Circus, hosted by David Hamilton.

‘A rare delight,’ said the Sunday Times; ‘engrossing… it’s all beautiful fun’ added the Daily Mail about Terry Dixons’ two one-hour films on the life and work of Walt Disney. Having achieved rare access to the Disney empire, the story was told both through film clips (from the earliest sketches to Disney’s wartime propaganda cartoons) and in the words of the people who knew and worked with Disney – animators and directors, Walt’s daughter (who sang Snow White’s songs), and even the living voice of Donald Duck, Clarence Nash. 14 million people watched the films, placing them firmly in the Top Ten, itself a rare achievement for television documentaries.

Former CIA Director William Colby and ex-Head of US Air Force Intelligence General Keegan were among those interviewed by Peter Williams in This Week’s five-programme series on international intelligence and espionage, which revealed a worldwide network of spying and intrigue, murder and blackmail, and a new, horrifying generation of nuclear ‘superweapons’.

‘NEW YEAR! NEW SHOW!
NEW FANTASIES!
WELCOME TO THE FOLLIES OF ’77!’

Rock Follies of ’77 began in May, was interrupted by dispute halfway through its run, and finally concluded towards the end of the year, by which time plans were already under way for a Follies feature film. In this second series the Little Ladies rock group, comprising Julie Covington, Rula Lenska, Charlotte Cornwell and new member Sue Jones-Davies, had found a new extrovert manager, zestfully played by Beth Porter. Over twenty new songs by Andy Mackay were included.

‘Festooned with television awards, the Little Ladies return as good as new. Maybe better. I like it very much. I always did. What more can I say but Hot Tomales! Crazee! Yassir!’

‘The most remarkable example of imagination and skills, marrying ideas and techniques, that British television has achieved in a long while.’

Guardian

‘It has displayed techniques, innovations, variety and wit which marks it, if not unique, certainly special. It showed us fresh skills with the medium which, hopefully, will leave their mark on future television drama.’

Morning Star

‘(We) will feel its vibrations for years to come. Schuman, director Bill Hayes and producer Andrew Brown stretched television’s oblong box and made it accommodate something that wouldn’t have worked half as well in any other medium. Was it a pop show, satire, social drama, Hollywood musical spoof, blue’ish revue, or what? The only possible answer is “Yes”.’

Sunday Times

The Government’s ‘Great Education Debate’ peaked in the early summer. Shortly after Panorama’s shock report on the Faraday school, Thames’ Our School and Hard Times gave perspective to progressive teaching in comprehensives. Producer David Hodgson, whose Magpie special on young gymnasts was transmitted earlier in the year, aired the children’s thoughts on their education through their creative work, as practised in an inner London comprehensive:

Then seven half-hour reports investigated the workings of our state schools, posing the question Could Do Better? Reporter Jenny Conway visited primary and secondary schools, asking what school is for and whether it achieves its aims. In the final programme, Education Minister Shirley Williams and Shadow Spokesman Norman St John Stevas spoke about their educational ideals.

‘Education has proved surprisingly difficult to treat on television in any sustained and popular way. These programmes have shown a surer, more popular grasp of the issues than many recent contributions to the debate.’

Times Education Supplement

Barry Hanson, now producing ‘Out’ for Euston Films, was producer on six new Plays for Britain for the ITV Playhouse. This series, which has an unrivalled record for introducing new drama writers to television, used contemporary Britain as the overall backcloth for all its stories. They ranged widely, from the kidnapping of a pop star, to a witty evocation of a large company’s annual outing, to a vivid story of a car-stealing ring.

Plays for Britain:

Not Quite Cricket by Barry Keefe
The Proofing Session by E A Whitehead
Cork and Bottle by Michael Sadler
Last Summer by Peter Prince
It’s Only Rock ’n Roll by Tony Bicat
The Road Runner by Michael Abbensetts

‘A hint of the long gone Armchair Theatre era of Sydney Newman productions. There was the same vivid interest in and sympathy with pedestrian enough matters, used to highlight wider social questions.’

Daily Mail

‘ITV Playhouse scored a hit for six with “It’s Not Quite Cricket” This story of an office outing and cricket match was a joy.’

Daily Mirror

Paradise Island originated as a short play by a design engineer called Michael Haley, inspired by a holiday in the Scilly Isles. He sent it to Thames, where it was developed into a whimsical situation comedy series with a cast of two – Bill Maynard and William Franklyn as, respectively, a priest and ships entertainments officer, who have been cast away on a desert island.

As Paradise Island concluded its run, William Franklyn remained on Thames screens with a totally different kind of comedy series – What’s on Next?, a fast-moving mix of jokes and sketches in which he was joined by Pam Ayres, Barry Cryer, Bob Todd, Jim Davidson, Anna Dawson and Sandra Dickinson.

This Monday night laugh-in gets funnier and funnier wrote the Daily Mail, and the audience agreed – it entered the London and Network Top Tens in third place, and by the second week had topped the London ratings.

‘Anyone too young to remember Laugh-In must have enjoyed the pace of What’s On Next?, wondering why previous comedy programmes hadn’t cashed in on sheer momentum. We have William Franklyn devilish smooth and caddishly quizzical, presiding over a team, encouraging smiles. It’s good to see Franklyn and his urbane, faintly disapproving style of light comedy. And it’s nice to get a show with so many comediennes.

Pam Ayres, the poetess whose metres seem to owe more to the Gas Board than inspiration, was the revelation. She is a wonderfully natural and appealing person, able to work more fun from a weak gag than plastic performers can find in a good one. Its mixture of low comedy and high spirits makes me ready to watch it again.’

Daily Mail

Outside Broadcasts covered the Derby and the Epsom Summer Meeting in June, and there were more horses in The King’s Troop, a colourful portrayal of the ceremonial horse artillery unit, which was transmitted on Jubilee Thursday.

In May and June, This Week concentrated on the major overseas stories then dominating the headlines – three programmes on the Middle East, and two on the Ulster loyalist strike.

Good Afternoon, attracting special attention for its harder news interviews and coverage, increased its audience through the year. April saw Mavis Nicholson interviewing Lady Mosley on her controversial biography of Sir Oswald and in May, she interviewed R D Laing. Judith Chalmers discussed natural childbirth with Frederic Leboyer, and all four presenters (with Elaine Grand and Mary Parkinson) met Stock Exchange Chairman Nicholas Goodison in the Thames studio. Film and OB reports covered education, nuclear power, and Morris dancing in the Cotswolds.

‘We believe passionately in making programmes which respect our afternoon audience. We don’t reckon to make programmes for ghetto groups of any kind, but for any intelligent viewer who may choose to look at us. There are now three million of them, and 33⅓% are male.’

Catherine Freeman, Producer, Good Afternoon.

Eric Sykes showed his rarely-seen talents as singer, dancer and musician as well as comedian, in a self-scripted one-hour special which reunited him with many of his long-standing partners in entertainment – Hattie Jacques, Jimmy Edwards, Irene Handl and Peter Cook among them.

The post Spring programmes appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Rainbow, the pre-school children’s programme, has received worldwide praise for its pioneering documentary films for pre-school children. The latest in this occasional series, designed to introduce the youngest viewers to traumatic aspects of growing up, showed the arrival of a new member to the family, in Rainbow Has a New Baby.

‘Rainbow produces another fascinating look at the toddlers this evening. There’s an “ooooh” in every shot as three-year-old Dominic North – a smashing cherub – learns to live with an interloper in the house, his new sister Felicity. There is a great deal of illuminating observation in Charles Warren’s production. These programmes may be aimed at under-fives, but they prove irresistible to adults, too.’

Daily Express

Straight into the London Top Ten in third position, the summer series of Get Some In! continued the success story of Tony Selby and his ‘erks’ from the RAF.

For the first time, marriage guidance counsellors and their clients were filmed in the throes of consultation, in Nick Broomfield’s often disturbing and intimate film Marriage Guidance. Subsequently, he was invited to tour American colleges, to show and talk about the film.

Ken Ashton’s Lonely Hearts portrayed the problems of loneliness in our big cities through the eyes of ten young people, all of them desperate for friendship.

The Ruth Ellis Story, by Chris Goddard, looked back two decades to one of the most controversial postwar murder trials, that of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain.

Frank Cvitanovich combined newsreel film, Japanese propaganda footage and specially-shot material to recreate The Hunting of Force Z, the story of how the Japanese hunted and finally sank the battleships ‘Repulse’ and ‘Prince of Wales’ in 1941. Sir Michael Redgrave was narrator.

Michael Aspel narrated Joan Aiken’s Mice and Mendelson, a lunchtime story series for children about a group of mice and a pony named Mendelson.

Secret experiments in a laboratory lead to a mysterious murder: Whodunnit? asked Jon Pertwee, in the first of a new series of the successful early-evening panel show. Magnus Pyke, Bill Pertwee, Tessa Wyatt, Jimmy Jewell, Connie Booth and Alfred Marks were among the guesting sleuths.

Tom O’Connor, described by The Stage as ‘the sort of compere the old masters at the Palladium would be proud of,’ took the television variety show back to a theatre setting, and straight back to the top of the National Top Twenty with Night Out at the London Casino. With audiences of up to 14¼ million, the show followed the chart-topping format of the established Wednesday at Eight, including the Name That Tune audience contest. Guests in this entertainment highlight for ITVs summer season included Tommy Cooper, Twiggy, Norman Wisdom, Mike and Bernie Winters and Frankie Howerd.

The months between the end of Today, and the start in September of its successor Thames at 6, vacated the 6.00pm slot for new series. Allan Hargreaves turned quizmaster for The London Quiz, in which teams from London schools pitted their knowledge of London, past and present, in a knock-out tournament. Monty Modlyn returned with A Town Called; among the towns he visited were Chatham, Hampstead, Guildford, and Dinard in France. Get Out and Push was a series of half-hour documentaries about ordinary people who are committed to helping others – neither famous nor rich, their only motive being that they want to help. In Mavis, Mavis Nicholson met six people, first in their home and then in the studio, to discuss topics of special interest to them – from Barbara Cartland on girls’ morals, via John Aspinall on the dignity of animals, to John Mortimer pleading for more freedom of choice. And in preparation for the coming soccer season, Brough Scott returned with Sportscene, reviewing London’s sports.

Exactly one year after a chemical cloud escaped from a factory in Seveso, Italy, John Fielding returned to make a shock This Week Special: Seveso, the Poison Cloud. He revealed a state of maladministration which had allowed the poison to continue spreading, while failing to protect the victims of the disaster.

The Miss Thames competition, and sporting events ranging from the Australia versus the Rest of the World Jubilee cricket match, and international soccer with England against Switzerland, to a series of darts matches, were covered by Thames’ Outside Broadcasts cameras in the late summer.

Rolf Harris returned with a new series of Quick on the Draw, and was also one of the guests in The David Nixon Show; others included in David’s guestlist were Ron Moody, Ray Allen and Lord Charles, Diana Dors and Anita Harris.

This Week produced disturbing evidence that 8000 pounds of MUF nuclear material unaccounted for – were potentially on the illegal world arms market. Llew Gardner, joining the programme from Today, reported on a little-aired crisis, that of Quebec nationalism, in The French Disconnection.

Early in 1977, Orient Street, London SE11 was stripped of its television aerials and double yellow lines, as producer Paul Knight transformed it into Dulcimer Street in 1938 – setting for London Belongs to Me, a drama series based on Norman Collins’ internationally best-selling novel about London and Londoners during the early years of World War II. Derek Farr, Madge Ryan, Patricia Hayes, Peter Jeffrey and Terence Budd starred.

‘Few successful novels become successful TV series. The Thames adaptation of Norman Collins’ best-selling novel London Belongs to Me looks like the exception. Collins’ wry sympathy with his characters has been skilfully transferred to the TV series by writer Hugh Leonard and producer Paul Knight. There are excellent performances by Terence Budd as Percy Boon, Peter Jeffrey as Mr Squales and Patricia Hayes as Connie Coke.’

Sunday Times

‘A long overdue recognition of sub-Dickensian literary artifact that is made for television. It has a large cast of fascinating characters – what the trade calls a “human story.”. Hugh Leonard sticks close to the novel, stressing the essential “ordinariness” of Collins’ extraordinary people, with every part a cameo and every cameo well carved in sharp relief. The design and mise-en-scene are admirable and the direction efficiently unobtrusive.’

Broadcast

‘What’s different about this telly period drama is that it’s funny – which period dramas, in general, are not. The series is as tasty, and nutty, as a fruitcake.’

Daily Mirror

Two years after it began as a five-minute insert. Help! became a daily programme in September, expanding from volunteer recruitment to include information on health, employment and welfare rights. By Christmas over 15,000 enquiries were received by the programme, many requesting specially-produced publications: ‘Help Yourself to London,’ a listing of facilities and opportunities for pensioners produced in co-operation with Age Concern (Greater London), was sent to 8,000 viewers. Gordon Honeycombe read the news in Hindustani (illustrating the language problems of home-hound Asian women), Cilia Black spoke about losing her baby, and Instant Sunshine even sang a special song on curing the Christmas hangover, as Help! used different forms of presentation to illustrate their topics. The year of Help! ended with an appeal for wool and unwanted woollens to make patchwork blankets – a mile-long strip of wool and 5,000 jumpers were the result.

This Week returned to Ireland, with a remarkable secret film made in the Maze prison, and an investigation into the RUC’s interrogation techniques; while at home, Peter Williams reported on the threat of a footballers’ strike.

Michael Robbins, Nigel Lambert, Mike Savage and Lynda Bellingham starred as the hilariously ineffective crime-fighting force of a small, outer London police station in The Fuzz, a new situation comedy by ‘Budgie’ creator Willis Hall.

Six months in the making on location in Amsterdam, Euston Films’ new production of Van der Valk went straight into the Network Top Ten, and quickly found a permanent place there with up to 14¼ million viewers. Barry Foster returned as the Dutch detective, joined by a new wife, Joanna Dunham and Nigel Stock as his police boss. Multiple car chases, dramatic effects and stunts injected Euston Films’ trademark of high action into the already familiar character and format. ‘Mike Vardy’s direction is quite exceptional’ the Daily Express reported on the first episode; ‘the series serves a very unusual place in the area of the TV sleuth. It is unorthodox and full of extremely good performances, with Barry Foster filling the bill completely’

Half a million sales of Rainbows, packs designed to reflect the Rainbow series, were topped during 1977. Sold in 23 countries, these have proved Thames’ most successful programme-related publishing venture, and in August a similar series of activity packs relating to Magpie were also launched. Other merchandise in the year ranged from jigsaws based on Cosgrove Hall’s cartoon series, to a silver disc for the Rock Follies of ’77 record.

The post Summer programmes appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

‘In the first “This Sporting Land” Wynford Vaughan Thomas gives a witty, learned and thoroughly enjoyable account of the history and current idiosyncrasies of cricket. It’s a gem of a programme and will beguile even the most fervent disliker of the game’

Sunday Times

‘The narration, by Wynford Vaughan Thomas, is a mixture of acid, irony, mockery and straight reportage. Each programme will certainly hold the attention. They are entertaining, informative and humorous!’

Times Educational Supplement

ON 12 SEPTEMBER THAMES LAUNCHED TWO MAJOR NEW DAILY PROGRAMMES,
THAMES AT 6 AND AFTER NOON

Former ITN newscaster Andrew Gardner introduced Thames at 6, a 6.00pm report on London and its day. The production was structured to bring more hard, regional news coverage, and more deeply probing investigations, to the traditional Today function. Within the first month these aims began to be realised, with interviews with Jim Slater and the Minister for Health, special investigations into the Luton murder and the drug Primados, and on the lighter side, Kenny Everett’s zany music reviews hinted at what is to come when Kenny;s own series starts on Thames during 1978.

‘The word has clearly gone out that no-one is going to be allowed to get away with anything. The brief bursts of questioning are ultra-tough. (The first week has) managed already by turns to illuminate, to irritate and to celebrate’

Times

After Noon was a recasting of its successful predecessor Good Afternoon, broadening the outlook from traditional women’s subjects’ to greater coverage of the arts, politics, education, medicine and social questions, alongside the personality interviews and magazine features.

In its first weeks, After Noon went on location with reports on the Tate Gallery’s ‘Save the Stubbs’ campaign (with an interview with Arts Minister Lord Donaldson), and on life in high rise blocks. Personality interviews included Mary Parkinson with Pierre Cardin, Judith Chalmers with James Herriot, Elaine Grand meeting Lord Shinwell, Mavis Nicholson holding the first-ever TV interview with current pop sensation Elvis Costello, followed shortly by Morecambe and Wise.

Straight into the national ratings in second place, John Alderton’s first situation comedy series for Thames, The Upchat Line, revolved around Mike Upchat, a freewheeling man about town. ‘We don’t know what he does for a living,’ Alderton explained. ‘Sometimes he says he’s a writer but at other times he claims to be anything from a psychologist to a piano tuner.’

‘The Upchat Line, written by Keith Waterhouse and featuring John Alderton, marks something of a welcome and enterprising departure from the old routine. For this is comedy refined down to a quieter, more relaxed level with some nicely polished lines doing the work of the usual mad antics, and a real star performance from one of the best light comedy actors around today. It is all done with great panache and style, with Mr Alderton giving a deceptively easy performance, casually putting together all the little bits of business, and underplaying and drawling his lines but timing everything with split second precision.

Mr Waterhouse has put together a script tailored to suit him to perfection, and also to provide Thames with a fresh and obviously rewarding range of comedy.’

Daily Telegraph

‘Hilarious new comedy series in which John Alderton proves his comic talent as a would-be writer who spends most of his life trying to find somewhere to lay his head – and his birds. Looks very promising (though not for the husbands!).’

Sunday Mirror

After a summer trip to Spain filming inserts for future programmes, Magpie returned with a new presenter to join the team of Jenny Hanley and Mick Robertson: 24-year-old ex-LBC news director Tommy Boyd, selected from 2,000 applicants. Here’s how the London Evening News welcomed the programme back:

‘The most entertaining and informative children’s programme on television is Magpie, on Thames. Jenny Hanley is extremely attractive and has a presence and authority that enthralls the children. The producers go to remarkable lengths and not a little expense in bringing strange and unusual items to the programme, and whether the kiddies realise ft or not, they are being educated as well as entertained. Magpie is an intelligent show, and also has a fine record in obtaining money for children’s charities.’

Evening News

Originally made as a schools programme, Superman and the Bride’s outspoken survey of how we are conditioned by the media (especially television and film) reached the adult audience in October. Its blend of documentary and revue was described as ‘a refreshing TV breakthrough’ by the Daily Mail.

‘Eight years of the average viewer’s life is spent in front of the box. In that time each one should be forced to spend forty-five minutes watching Superman and the Bride for it is the most intelligent and important appraisal yet produced of the images fed to us by the mass media.’

TimeOut

‘As one of the vox pop interviewees said, you’ve got to overstate a case to make it effectively, and this was the jolliest, zippiest overstatement of a case that badly needs making – energetically, and again and again. It could well prompt further pieces of televisual self-scrutiny. It was itself replete with delicious ironies, notably its unabashed use of advertising techniques as a way of attacking advertising techniques, and also its mere presence on our screens – which is living proof that the “system” can be penetrated.’

The Times

A television appearance by Tommy Steele is a rare event, and to celebrate his twenty-first year in showbusiness (Tommy’s first hit, ‘Rock With the Caveman’, coincided with the first year of ITV) he came to Thames for Tommy Steele and a Show. It was a mammoth production, with producer/director Keith Beckett pulling every trick from videotape technology, to interpret the ‘Show’ as devised by Tommy and written by Eric Merriman. For an hour of music, dance and magic effects, Tommy Steele held the spotlight, and more than 14 million people watched the programme.

‘This in one of the very best light entertainment shows I’ve seen on television. Apart from its star – the eternally appealing Tommy who celebrates his 21st year in show business – the programme uses the latest electronic devices for some stunning visual effects, has all the slick glamour and razmatazz of a Hollywood musical, and imaginative, precision, ballet routines worthy of a Busby Berkeley film’

Daily Express

‘Give ’em the old razzle-dazzle’ sang the star on ITV’s Tommy Steele and a Show, and he certainly did. During his all-singing, all-dancing special it was hard to realise that Tommy was celebrating his 21st year in show business.

With his boyish exuberance and appealing charisma, Tommy delivered a delightful hour of sheer escapism, a welcome opportunity for us to sit back and enjoy his wide-ranging talents’

Evening News

Drama Controller Verity Lambert personally produced The Norman Conquests, Alan Ayckbourn’s West End stage sensation which, according to the Daily Mail, ‘transferred superbly from stage to television’. 11 million viewers shared the disastrous weekend of family argument, which was directed by Herbert Wise as three two-hour plays.

‘The Norman Conquests was a triumph and a treat, Alan Ayckbourn’s tragi-comic trilogy being not only funny but graced by universally accomplished performances. Tom Conti was allowed to let off the fireworks, so to speak, as Norman. But he was matched by Richard Briers’ Reg, often speaking volumes with a soundless double-take; or Penelope Keith, Fiona Walker and Penelope Wilton as the women. Not forgetting David Troughton, in making a gormless bore into a believable, even fascinating person. Just as the action moved from room to room, so the focus shifted, play by play, to different characters, none of whom gave short measure.

A Rolls-Royce of a project, coachbuilt and splendidly engineered.’

Daily Mail

‘The Norman Conquests must be one of the best and funniest things on screen. It justified ITV’s bold decision to give it a total of six hours peak viewing. The plays explore the same weekend in the life of a bickering family from three different viewpoints in witty dialogue as well-honed as a surgeon’s scalpel.’

The Daily Mirror

1976 had marked a unique achievement by Thames when both the drama and documentary Prix Italia awards were won by, respectively, The Naked Civil Servant and Beauty, Bonny, Daisy, Violet, Grace and Geoffrey Morton. In 1977, a clean sweep of this international event was completed, when the third category, music, came to Thames for the St Nicolas Cantata. Benjamin Britten’s musical setting of the Father Christmas story was recorded on location at St Albans’ Cathedral and first transmitted at Christmas 1976.

Meanwhile, the Royal Television Society voted Nick Downie News Feature Cameraman of the year for his This Week programme, ‘War in the Sahara’ – the fourth consecutive year that This Week had won an RTS award.

In October Outside Broadcasts covered the Britannia Awards, the first British awards for popular music, featuring several major acts headed by the reunited Simon and Garfunkel. OBs followed a different kind of entertainment award hunt in the series of Pub Entertainer of the Year, hosted by Frank Carson, which ended in December with 14 million viewers watching the grand final. The England v Italy World Cup soccer match at Wembley was screened to 16 million viewers. Preceding Thames’ match coverage, Sportscene flew Italy’s Giorgio Chinaglia from America to preview the game prospects with Bobby Moore, Terry Venables and other experts.

Vince Powell’s situation comedy Odd Man Out introduced John Inman as fish-and-chip shop owner Neville Sutcliffe, who inherits half of a stick-rock factory in Sussex. Josephine Tewson played his step-sister and factory co-owner, Dorothy, who shared the problems, arguments and laughs of running the business.

To mark the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the USSR, Thames transmitted Hammer and Sickle, an intensively researched history from the 1917 Revolution through the stormy decades of Lenin, Stalin and Krushchev to the present. Producer Martin Smith traced many unique pieces of film of Stalin’s terror chief Beria, of life inside a gulag, of the Czech invasion as filmed by the Russian troops. The two-hour production was written by Neal Ascherson and narrated by Paul Scofield.

Denis Norden returned for the seventh series of Looks Familiar in October. One of daytime television’s most popular programmes, guests for the new series included Tony Curtis, Charlie Drake, Annie Ross, John Junkin, Elaine Stritch and Michael Parkinson.

As ITV’s schools programming entered its third decade, Thames, the single biggest contributor to the network, launched two major new strands to the curriculum. French Studies, for 13- to 16-year-olds, began with five documentaries on aspects of French life, and a series of actuality film sequences shot in France. The English Programme presented new two-part productions of outstanding, published TV plays – Julia Jones’ ‘The Piano’, and Barry Hines’ ‘Speech Day’, followed by a film documentary on the work of Barry Hines. Both programmes were designed to run through a full year’s course, unlike the normal single-term compass of television school’s programming.

‘Ask a friend whether he watched the first Time for Business and before you can add “Pretty much like the other business programmes” he forestalls you with wildly enthusiastic praise of – say – the section on franchising, pointing out how highly original it was,’ wrote Chris Dunkley in the Financial Times. Not to be like the other comparable programmes was important in formulating Time for Business. Eamonn Andrews was a presenter for the layman, not the expert. He explained: ‘people are becoming more sophisticated about the uses of their own money and want to understand what makes the world of business tick. My job, with expert back-up, is to understand that myself, because if I do, so will the ordinary viewer.’

Broadcast live, the programmes gave an hour of film report and studio presentation of business, manufacturing, and the city. Alongside news, information and advice for the big and small investor alike, a more important, broader aim was access to the world of business – ’Allow us into your boardrooms and factories,’ producer James Butler said in a launch speech to high-ranking businessmen. ‘I would like to see us become as familiar a sight around the businesses of Britain as television is at football matches.’ Among those present was Sir Charles Forte who responded, ‘I think Eamonn Andrews will make people watch. There’s an aura of the unknown about business which I think he can break down. If the programme can show how good relationships in business generally are, that will be a great achievement.’

Time for Business was launched with a ‘development capital competition’, designed to illustrate the investment problems of small businesses. The programme offered to make available up to £250,000 for the best investment proposal submitted. The range of responses has already been enormous, from a new glass-lining process for furnaces, to a design for a racing cycle, to a methodist minister who wants to build a new church. So far, audiences have averaged ¾ million – more than the combined daily circulation of the Guardian and Times.

‘Proof positive that money programmes need not be above the heads of the ordinary viewer.’

The Times

There was a stir in the sixteenth, final series of Opportunity Knocks! when Hughie Green introduced a contestant with his face masked by a paper bag. It was explained that this was a one-time teenage idol who now preferred anonymity. He turned out to be P J Proby who was voted into second place by the viewers.

Prince Charles donned a Magpie badge when he was filmed with Mick Robertson at Dunraven Castle in Wales. He joined in the work of a group of Cardiff children, who are clearing waste land for a country park under the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Fund. The 1977 Magpie Christmas appeal for children with brittle bones ran through December and topped the record figure of £250,000.

Thames at 6‘s investigation unit discovered two identical pairs of boots in neighbouring West End shops – also they found a threefold difference in price. For three days the programme pursued the investigation. On the third day, a public apology admitted the expensive boots had been overpriced. They were finally on sale at a fifth of their original price.

Wednesday at Eight‘s winter run jumped into the charts in fifth position. With guest stars like Frankie Vaughan and Max Bygraves, the ratings steadily increased, to settle in December to a regular Network audeince of 18 million.

West German terrorism, secret film of Chile under Pinochet, and reports from Spain and Portugal were covered by This Week towards the year’s end. ‘A Miserable and Lonely Death,’ This Week’s scoop reconstruction of the Steve Biko inquest, was widely praised and has since been adapted for stage production by the Royal Shakespeare Company with Ian McKellen in the main role.

Thames made a large contribution to ITV’s post-Christmas holiday entertainment. Max’s Holiday Hour brought Max Bygraves, Lena Zavaroni and Charlie Cairoli to an audience of nearly 15 millions, and there were two innovative musical pairings when Vera Lynn joined George Shearing, and Peggy Lee shared the spotlight with Charles Aznavour. The Queen’s Racehorses, on Boxing Day, was a totally informal film portrait of H.M. the Queen, talking about and seen with the horses she so loves.

Repeats of Man About the House had regularly topped the ratings during the summer, and the programme’s first offshoot George and Mildred jumped back into the Top Five with a new series, again starring Brian Murphy and Yootha Joyce. With audiences as high as 19.7 million, it was the most popular comedy series on British television in 1977.

‘The funniest and best socially observed comedy of the year’

‘As long as the stars retain their enthusiasm and the writers keep up the mixture of crisp one-liners. cross-purposes encounters and an undercurrent of mild sauciness … it could run for years.’

Daily Mail

‘With a splendidly direct approach, the series has a commendable lack of coyness,’ the Daily Mirror commented on the late-night Problems. Jenny Conway and Tony Bastable were the reporters, on adult sexual problems.

The green, furry, multi-legged Wotsit from Whizzbang made his TV debut in Rainbow, where his zany, fantastic adventures proved so popular that in November he began his own children’s series. Joe Lynch narrated Samantha Lee’s stories.

Michael Whyte, a new director to Thames’ documentary department, spent eighteen months investigating the nationwide problem of Britain’s violent and severely disordered children. The result was a disturbing, at times shocking trilogy of films. 17-year-old Billy was on trial for grievous bodily harm when the first film was made; Jimmy has been in care since the age of twelve, when he attacked his mother with a bread knife; and the third film, Aycliffe, visited a treatment centre for extremely disordered children.

‘Do you like hitting people Jimmy?’
‘If they deserve it, yeah.’
‘Do you ever hit your friends?’
‘If they shout “Chelsea!” or things like that.’
‘But why?’
‘Because there’s nothing else to do these days, is there?’

15-year-old ‘Jimmy,’ the subject of the second of three films on violent children.

John Thaw and Dennis Waterman’s first Sweeney film earned them both awards, as best actor and most promising male newcomer respectively, in the Evening News Film Awards, covered for ITV by Thames. 1978 will see the fourth, final TV series of The Sweeney, and also the second Sweeney feature film.

The post Autumn programmes appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

• Today
• This Week
• People & Politics
• Time For Business
• Thames at 6
• London Looks Forward
  • The Living City
  • The Future City
• Documentaries
  • Hazlitt in Love
  • The Gospel According To St Michael
  • Walt Disney (2 programmes)
  • Marriage Guidance
  • Lonely Hearts
  • The Ruth Ellis Story
  • The Hunting of Force Z
  • Hammer & Sickle
  • Billy
  • Jimmy
  • Aycliffe

OUTSIDE BROADCASTS

• Series
  • Drive In
  • A Town Called
  • Kitchen Garden
  • Wish You Were Here…?
  • Pub Entertainer of the Year
• Sport
  • Darts
  • Horse Racing from Sandown, Newmarket, Epsom, Lingfield
  • Football (7 matches, including 4 internationals)
  • Sportscene
  • Wrestling
• Events
  • Jubilee Flower Show
  • Miss Thames
  • Astrology
  • Model Railway Exhibition
  • Nurse of the Year
  • Variety Club Lunch
  • Evening Standard Drama Awards
  • Evening News Film Awards
  • Royal Film Performance
  • Great British Achievements
  • Chipperfield’s Circus (Easter and Christmas)
  • The Motor Show
  • Britannia Awards
  • The Loyal Address

LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT

• Specials
  • The Benny Hill Show
  • TV Times Top Ten Awards
  • The Eric Sykes Show
  • Bruce and More Girls
  • The Peggy Lee Show
  • Max Bygraves’ Christmas Show
  • Vera Lynn Sings
• Series
  • David Nixon Show
  • Looks Familiar
  • Opportunity Knocks
  • This is Your Life
  • Whose Baby?
  • Whodunnit?
  • Wednesday at Eight
  • The Tom O’Connor Show
  • The Little and Large Tellyshow
  • Night Out at The London Casino
• Comedy Series
  • Odd Man Out
  • Get Some In
  • George and Mildred
  • What’s On Next?
  • Paradise Island
  • Miss Jones & Son
  • The Fuzz
  • The Upchat Line

CHILDREN’S

• Pre-School Learning
  • Rainbow
  • Rainbow Has A Baby
• General Interest
  • Magpie
  • Fanfare
  • Somersault to Moscow (Magpie Special)
  • …And I Write Music (Magpie Special)
• Drama
  • The Tomorrow People
  • Horse in The House
• Animation Series
  • Jamie and The Magic Torch
  • Chorlton and The Wheelies
• Entertainment
  • Michael Bentine’s Potty Time
  • Sooty
• Pre-School Entertainment
  • And Maisy Too
  • Mice and Mendelson
  • The Wotsit From Whizz-Bang

FEATURES, EDUCATION AND RELIGION

• Features
  • After Noon
  • Mavis
  • Money-Go-Round
  • London Scene
  • Superman & The Bride
  • The Story of Job
  • Problems
  • Help!
  • Our School and Hard Times
• Education
  • Seeing and Doing
  • Finding Out
  • The World Around Us
  • Writer’s Workshop
  • The English Programme
  • French Studies
  • It’s Life
  • It’s More Life
  • London: The Making of a City
• Adult Education
  • Could Do Better?
  • This Sporting Land
• Religion
  • Get Out and Push
  • Close
  • Christmas Pie
  • Drawing to an End
  • Faith In Place: Matt’s Place
  • Christmas Special
  • A Matter of Morals
  • St Nicolas Cantata

DRAMA

• Serial
  • Rooms – 61 episodes
• Series
  • Romance – 5 episodes
  • Rock Follies of ’77 – 7 episodes
  • London Belongs To Me – 7 episodes
  • The Norman Conquests
    • Table Manners
    • Living Together
    • Round & Round The Garden
• Film Series
  • The Sweeney
  • Van Der Valk
• Plays For Britain
  • Cork & Bottle
  • Last Summer
  • It’s Only Rock ’n Roll
  • The Proofing Session
  • Not Quite Cricket

The post The programme year 1977 appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

On June 22, one-and-a-half million Londoners watched a unique evening of television when Thames devoted four hours to exploring Londons present state and future prospects. This was the culmination of two months of special programmes, and prefaced a two-day conference, all part of Thames’ London Looks Forward project.

The project also included a unique research study of Londoners’ attitudes, a new book on London planning, and a series of specially-commissioned background papers.

The eight documentaries that preceded 22 June ‘evening of London’ revolved around the homes and lives of four London families, all from different areas and social groups. Made by the Today team and broadcast on consecutive Fridays from April, the films surveyed London through the families’ eyes taking planning issues to the people, and at the same time evoking the peoples’ experience for the planners. Many distinguished planners and decision-makers came to Thames’ studios on June 22, first to watch a special 90-minute documentary on London’s present and future, and then to join in live televised debate and answer the criticisms voiced in the programme. The four families were among the studio audience who heard, and questioned, the varying philosophies proposed.

The London Looks Forward unit is currently investigating two major problems which affect London’s present and future – those of derelict land, and the lack of playspace for children.

THE CONFERENCE

Howard Thomas, in his welcoming message to all attending the Conference, described the project as aiming to ‘help Londoners learn about and contribute to the future planning of their great city’, and expressed Thames’ gratitude to the many people and organisations whose enthusiastic and inspired help’ had been essential to the success of the project. HRH Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh opened the London Looks Forward Conference on Monday 4 July, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Prince Philip, who had played a formative part in pre-conference discussions, set the tone for the Conference by exhorting participants to concentrate on specific means of action, rather than general aims, and to reconcile conflicts in search of a common sense of purpose.

Conference Chairman Max Nicholson then launched the first of six working sessions which covered the project’s primary themes. The speakers, all actively involved in shaping London’s development, ranged across the planning spectrum, from trades unionists to academics, from Secretary of State for the Environment Peter Shore to Terry Harris of the Albany Community Arts Centre and Peter Large, Chairman of the Jubilee Committee on mobility for the disabled.

For two intensive days, 200 invited members joined the Conference speakers in lively uninhibited discussion. A massive number of facts and ideas were generated, as points of contention and agreement were discovered between parties and people who were often meeting for the first time.

During the Conference, the Today programme was broadcast live from the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and transmitted impromptu interviews with Conference participants. LBC also gave full coverage to the event; its ‘AM’ programme gave up-to-the-minute reports on Conference proceedings and interviews with speakers. In a special half-hour programme on the evening of July 6, Prince Philip and other leading contributors to the project discussed their views of the Conference and their ideas for future action.

THE FUTURE

London Looks Forwards initial achievement has been to bring together a wide range of views, experience and interests to seek out fresh ideas and areas of agreement; that is also the future aim of the London Looks Forward unit, now in operation under the Conference Director John Hambley.

In particular the project will focus on what Londoners want of their city, and what they can do to improve it both by their own actions and by entering the continuing debate on the capital’s future.

On the research side, the London Looks Forward unit is now investigating dereliction and playspace, two issues at the heart of Londoners’ discontent with their environment. And with reason, for in inner London alone there is estimated to be some 2,000 acres of wasteland; the capital as a whole contains over 20 million square feet of disused industrial buildings. How has this appalling situation arisen, why does it persist and what should the government and the people of London be doing about it? These are some of the questions which the research is aiming to find out.

Even with all that vacant space, there are still not enough places for the kids to play. London Looks Forward’s work on playspace will start by running a survey to find out what sort of play facilities people in London actually want and can afford; it will be asking why official targets for provision of open space set in the early 1950s are still far from being reached by many London boroughs, and how local authorities, both of their own volition and together with local residents, can improve the situation.

In addition, the unit has put forward ideas for making short programmes or programme-slots on schemes initiated by Londoners for London. The aim would be to interest viewers in what is being done at a grass roots’ level, by people like them.

The post The programmes, the conference and the future appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

In 1977 Thames Television International, already established among the world’s top ten sellers of TV programmes, achieved two major landmarks. For the first time, more than one hundred countries now see Thames programmes. And with gross sales of over £3 million, the resulting profit from overseas sales has now topped £1 million.

In other innovatory areas too, 1977 was a year of firsts for Thames International:

AMERICA. The most successful new series on the American Networks during 1977 was Three’s Company, derived from Thames’ Man About the House. ABC purchased the programme format, which was adapted for American viewers by the top writing team of Nicholl, Ross and West. The first series in March was quickly established in the Nielson Top Ten, playing opposite ‘Hawaii Five-O’, and with the second autumn series regularly placed in the nation’s top three programmes, Three’s Company promises to repeat the success of its Thames predecessor. International distribution for the American series was retained by Thames, and with sales from Canada to Australia (and Britain) already achieved, Three’s Company will be one of Thames’ biggest international properties during 1978. And in South America Thames comedy made its debut when Man About The House was sold to Brazil.

EUROPE. Thames programmes are now familiar to European televiewers (16 countries in Europe have seen The Naked Civil Servant). During 1977 sales more than doubled, to top £¾ million. Most important sale was The World at War to France, the highest-earning single sale of Thames’ most successful overseas seller. Comedy, formerly considered ‘unexportable’ made large inroads: Father Dear Father made its debut in Spain, Italy where it topped the ratings, and Germany, where with Man About The House it was dubbed into German. And Jamie and the Magic Torch proved popular in Hungary, home of the world’s experts in animation.

AUSTRALIA. 1977 saw Thames become the biggest British programme exporter (including the BBC) to the crucial Australian market. All kinds of programmes are purchased by Australia from Thames: George & Mildred (ABC), Love Thy Neighbour (7 Network), The World at War (9 Network) and Benny Hill (0/10 Network) have all been the highest-rated programmes on the respective networks, and Benny Hill achieved the year’s single highest audience with a one-hour special which he travelled to Australia to make. Other countries where Thames is the largest UK exporter range from Greece to the newly-inaugurated Swaziland television service.

BRITAIN. Since Thames acquired distribution rights of New Zealand-made programmes, Thames International has entered the business of selling programmes to British companies. Most successful is Hunter’s Gold, now sold to sixteen countries – including the BBC.

IRAN. The National Iranian Radio and Television (NIRT) studios played host to Rainbow creator Pamela Lonsdale in June.

She was in Tehran to advise on a unique project, adapting the content of over a hundred Rainbow programmes for the young Iranian audience and their culture. Original actuality film sequences, drawings and music were combined with NIRT-originated material, Farsi-language voice-overs were dubbed on, and the end product was a series of Iranian Rainbows, which still retained the aims and techniques of the Thames programmes made for the British child. This served as forerunner to a similar operation in Jordan, where producer Charles Warren is helping in the making of an Arabic version to be screened throughout the Arab world.

THAMES TELEVISION INTERNATIONAL – SELLING TO THE WORLD

During 1977 Thames Television International executives travelled nearly 150,000 air miles, visiting 37 countries and selling a record total of 5,327 hours of programming.

The post Selling to the world appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

DIGITAL TELEVISION

Among the department’s current projects is one commissioned by the Independent Television Companies Association: an investigation into the feasibility of digital television, a system which borrows computer techniques to bring mathematical constancy to the television signal.

In simple terms, the system converts the television signals into digital codes at source. From then on, until decoded for transmission, the signals remain faithful in every detail to that which was encoded. Pictures generated in this way can be bounced off satellites without the slightest visible deterioration: live coverage of the US elections, for example, would be as clear as racing from Doncaster.

If the system were adopted, many of the familiar studio controls on picture quality would no longer be necessary. Ultimately, it may be possible to transmit digitally to the domestic receiver, when the familiar and often frustrating picture control knobs could largely be eliminated.

As with many revolutionary innovations, digital television will be costly. Even by today’s standards, equipment which can scan up to 80 million numbers per second is sophisticated, and sophistication is expensive. Part of engineering department’s job is to determine how few numbers need to be used to achieve the perfect picture.

The post Tomorrow’s technology appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

1. Director
2. Vision mixer
3. Vision control
4. Sound Control
5. Production assistant
6. Crew chief
7. Lightweight IVC 7000P camera
8. Videotape machine
9. Multi-channel communications system
10. Radio telephone system
11. Air conditioning system
12. Rack-mounted electronics
13. 15-KVA generator at rear

The post Unit 6 appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Optic fibres are made from a very high grade silica glass, so pure that a window pane 100 metres thick would let through more light than a 3mm window pane of conventional glass. When bundled and stretched into lengths, optic fibre cables are considerably more compact and efficient than the copper cables now in general use.

Being non-metallic, optic fibres do not suffer from electrical interference and are quite impervious to water, the two natural hazards that most commonly hamper outside broadcast units.

On a location such as Sandown Park racecourse, there is a permanent installation of copper cable jointly maintained by Thames and London Weekend Television. Thames’ engineers plan to solve interference problems by replacing this system with optic fibre cables carrying up to ten channels of sound, six for communication with the control room and four for transmission.

The post Fibre optic links appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Unlike earlier systems which simply monitored the availability of airtime and administered the bookings, ‘Enterprise’ also provides accurate and continuous evaluation of the many factors which affect campaign planning: audience composition; ratings patterns; the impact of programme changes; the current demand on the time available, which governs its price; and even the existence of bookings for competitive products. So clients can use the service to plan their campaigns before placing a firm schedule booking.

Over 300 different programs are built into the system with 60 million characters of information on bookings, breaks, programmes, ratings, products and agencies. It is run on EMI’s multi-million pound computer installation at Hayes in Middlesex, which is linked by four data lines to Thames’ Euston offices. At Euston, there are twenty ‘work stations’, operated by sales executives each with a visual display unit, keyboard and thermal printer. In addition, order confirmations and management reports are automatically printed out.

As well as being a breakthrough in time-buying, ‘Enterprise’ represents a new relationship between people and technology in the work of media evaluation. Since its inception several other ITV companies have expressed interest in how the system might be applied to selling airtime in their own areas.

The post Changing the face of time buying appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Chairman
Howard Thomas CBE

Managing Director
Bryan Cowgill

Executive Directors
Jeremy Isaacs – Programmes
Ian M Scott CA – Administration & Finance
James F Shaw – Sales & Marketing

Other Board Members
Mrs Mary Baker
Lord Brabourne
John T Davey FCA
R R W Dicks
H S L Dundas CBE DSO DFC DL
John M Kuipers
Sir John Read FCA
Colin S Wills FCA

Executives
Ben E Marr CA – Company Secretary
R G J Godfrey – Engineering & Technical Director
John Hambley – Planning & Development Director
John O’Keefe – Industrial Relations Director
J A Muir Sutherland – Managing Director, Thames Television International

F J Atkinson – Technical Controller
Donald Cullimore – Controller, Public Relations
RJ Hughes – Sales Controller
Derek Hunt – Chief Accountant
Philip Jones OBE – Controller of Light Entertainment
Verity Lambert – Controller of Drama
Max Lawson – Financial Controller
Sam Leitch – Head of Sport
Geoffrey Lugg – Controller, Programme Planning & Liaison
Ian Martin – Controller of Features, Education & Religion
Malcolm Morris – Controller, Programme Department (Administration)
Peter Pagnamenta – Controller of Current Affairs
A C Parkinson – Controller of Administration
Eric Parry – Controller, Programme Services
Mike Phillips – Controller, Advertising & Publications
Grahame Turner – Controller of Outside Broadcasts
Sue Turner – Controller of Children’s Programmes
Mike Wooller – Controller of Documentaries

HEAD OFFICE AND LONDON STUDIOS
Thames Television
306-316 Euston Road
London NW1 3BB
Telephone: 01-387 9494

TEDDINGTON STUDIOS
Teddington Lock
Teddington
Middlesex TW11 9NT
Telephone: 01-977 3252

MOBILE DIVISION
Twickenham Road
Hanworth
Middlesex
Telephone: 01-898 0011

REGIONAL OFFICE
Norfolk House
Smallbrook Queensway
Birmingham B5 4LJ
Telephone: 021-643 9151

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